


phalacrocoracidae

by lokium



Category: Spooks | MI-5
Genre: Character Study, Episode Tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 09:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7503072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokium/pseuds/lokium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He knows he’ll have to speak to Darshavin face-to-face. He doesn’t know if he’ll come out of that intact.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>in other words, i had Feelings abt lucas having to interact with darshavin in 8-04. content warnings for references to torture, no graphic/explicit depictions of violence or torture but heavily implied, mentions of panic/anxiety. also loads of stuff abt birds for some reason</p>
            </blockquote>





	phalacrocoracidae

Lucas doesn’t recognise the handwriting on the note, but the message, that single word, leaves no doubt as to who wrote it. One of the few civil topics of conversation that he and Oleg Darshavin had been able to agree upon was birds, after he had made some obscure comment regarding cormorants, their self-destructive behaviour, how they belong in one place but risk diving into another, an off-hand remark that he’d expected Darshavin to dismiss as pain-fuelled delirium. Darshavin had surprised him by revealing that he not only understood the reference but added to it, mentioning coots, another bird that flouts the conventions of water- and shore-faring attributes.

There’s some kind of poetry in it all, Lucas thinks, pretending they’re birdwatchers, interested but nonetheless merely observing, rather than the birds themselves, all the while drawing oblique parallels yet never admitting it.

Lucas wonders if he’s a cormorant, the one knowingly putting himself in danger, or a coot, part of neither world but by design, not choice.

Grebes don’t have nearly as poetic connotations, but they’re still interesting in a certain way. They have lobed toes, rather than webbed, similar to coots. Grebes are water birds, but they do badly on dry land, unlike most aquatic species; they can’t run for very long because of how far back on their body their legs are, and when in danger they default to diving rather than taking flight. If Lucas believed in intelligent design, he’d say God had planned the grebe poorly.

Lucas also wonders if Darshavin believes him to be a grebe. Lucas wonders if that’s what he really is.

The other part of the puzzle arrives with Harry, grey-scale security footage of a facility in Kent, one man dead and another escaped. He doesn’t need any more information—he knows who the escapee must be—but he still leans closer when Harry zooms in on one person.

The sight of Darshavin’s face, blurred and gritted as it is through the low-quality camera, turns Lucas’ stomach. He can feel the phantom chill of water dripping from his face, the burn of electricity on his skin, Darshavin’s hands deceptively gentle on his neck. In the present, he knows his hands are shaking, even if his face remains blank, and he needs to turn away to collect himself before explaining.

He knows he’ll have to speak to Darshavin face-to-face. He doesn’t know if he’ll come out of that intact.

 

 

 

 

The walk from the car—from Ros, from the illusion of safety—to Tilbury water tower feels like the proverbial march to the scaffold. The thought provides him little amusement, even if he does then have the urge to hum Berlioz in time to his footsteps. There’s a fraught tension in his chest, adrenaline sharpening his vision, and he has to force himself to breathe through the constriction in his throat.

The stone steps he walks up feel as if they lead to gallows. He takes a breath to steel himself before walking in, and Darshavin’s absence in the concrete block of a room is perhaps more surprising than his presence would have been.

The process of undressing and redressing ( _the boiler suit is coarse against his skin, chafing where it hangs from his shoulders, loose and anonymous and he wonders what the reason for it is, just to unsettle him perhaps_ ) is awkward; he has to force his fingers still enough to undo the buttons on his shirt, and while nudity in itself doesn’t concern him any more ( _not after what they’ve done to him, dignity is far more effective clothing than fabric_ ) it _is_ England in November and by the time he’s fastening the suit at his chest, he’s trembling from cold as well as anxiety.

When he hears Darshavin’s voice in stereo, both in his ear and behind him, it’s as if his consciousness removes itself from his body. He’s aware of his movements, slow and wary, voice hoarse, senses hyperaware, but it registers as no more immediate than a television broadcast would. He makes a pretence at civility, at calm, but he’s not within himself, he’s merely a spectator in this interaction. The birdwatcher, observing a dance between predator and prey.

After Darshavin leaves, he abruptly comes back to full awareness, static hovering at the edge of his hearing and vision, falling back against the crate behind him, and finally lets the panic attack overwhelm him.

 

 

 

 

For the past few months, since he’s been back in England, he’s kept _what happened_ in a category of its own, a box with no lid that only opens at night, that he can only think about under cover of darkness—at 3AM when he can’t sleep, when the flashbacks have forced him to drag his bedclothes onto the floor because the mattress is too soft, when he longs for a blanket not of fabric but of alcohol or drugs or even pain, anything other than this awful numb fear—a box that stays untouched during waking hours. Darshavin’s presence is that lid and now it’s open, and every time he closes his eyes he sees something different ( _the glint of a knife, a mocking smile, a car battery, a fishhook, rough skin over gentle hands, cruel fingers_ ) and every time someone touches him without warning he flinches and every time someone asks him if he’s okay he wants to snap, he wants to scream, he wants to tell the truth. He’s not fine, he’s damaged and hurting and fucking terrified, and he has to keep talking to this man who brought him comfort and pain both, he has to keep pretending that between the anger and fear and disgust there’s this horrible aching chasm, an emptiness that he’s scared will never be filled.

But he’s fine, because he has to be.

 

 

 

 

He wonders if the cormorant ever fears it will never resurface, if the coot resents its lobed feet that mark it as belonging to neither land nor water, if the grebe wishes its instinct was to fly rather than dive deeper. He’s still not sure which one he is.

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimers: i know next to nothing about birds, most of my info has come off wikipedia and vague prior knowledge. i myself am a trauma survivor but i have not experienced anything near torture, and even if i had, this is not meant to be a representation or spokesperson for trauma survivors. i have ptsd and a panic/anxiety disorder (both of which i see lucas having), this work is due to me connecting with issues in this episode and using lucas to express my own feelings as well as what i imagine he'd be going through.


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